Queer Between the Covers

Histories of Queer Publishing and Publishing Queer Voices

by Leila KassirRichard Espley

Queer Between the Covers presents a history of radical queer publishing and literature from 1880 to the modern day. The book demonstrates how the queer community could be brought together through shared literature and how LGBTQ people throughout modernity have used literature as an important forum for self-expression and self-actualisation when spaces and sites for queer expression were taboo. It also shows the ways in which queer texts have fought against censorship and repression and used as tools for political organisation and production. It includes first-hand accounts of seminal moments in queer history, including the birth of Hazard Press and the Defend Gay’s the Word Bookshop campaign in the 1980s.

This Manifold edition of Queer Between the Covers surfaces all the figures published in the book, as well as new links and resources including an updated list of the titles seized from Gay’s the Word bookshop as part of the 1984 Operation Tiger raid, drawing on work from the new online exhibition Seized Books!

Background image: original cover illustration by Mark Mitchell

Appendices

  • Titles seized by HM Customs & Excise from Gay’s the Word in 1984

    The titles seized by HM Customs & Excise from Gay’s the Word in three separate actions between April and October 1984, as recorded in Capital Gay, 2 November 1984. The headings and the book groupings are replicated as originally printed. The list has been updated with additional information provided by Leila Kassir in March 2024, shown in red.

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